So, as we all know by now, Pyre is amazing. Supergiant Games has done it again, with what many are calling its best game yet – lofty praise for a studio whose only other titles are Bastion and Transistor. When you do end up finishing it, though, you’ll notice one very important thing missing from Pyre: New Game Plus
Now, there are several good reasons for this, some of which were furnished directly by Supergiant Games, and others you can sort of figure out for yourself. While you would theoretically be able to keep all your Talismans and Masteries you earned, several of the characters (called Exiles) you played with the first time were Liberated at a low level. So you’d have a roster half full of level 3-5 Exiles and half with level 1-2. And, as Supergiant Games pointed out, the game has plenty of replayability in and of itself to not necessitate a New Game Plus.
That said, there are plenty of ways you can make your subsequent playthroughs of Pyre plenty challenging by implementing some self-imposed restrictions. Here are a few ways you can sort of create your own New Game Plus.
Hardest Difficulty
As much as I enjoyed Pyre (and believe me, I enjoyed Pyre quite a bit), I probably wouldn’t have had as good of a time with it if I didn’t up the difficulty. That’s not a mark against the game in any way – at least it had a satisfying option, unlike say Nier: Automata that went from drooling-buffoon easy to kick-your-teeth-in difficult just by switching from Normal to Hard – but it illustrates my point very clearly: If you want a true New Game Plus experience, play on the hardest difficulty.
While my opinions on what difficulty you should play on are abundantly clear, there is little reason to pussyfoot around on normal for your second playthrough. What’s the point? I can see a bit of an appeal from a narrative perspective – you want to see what might happen if you do things differently – but is that really going to hold you through the entire game a second time?
Furthermore, you should really have the fundamentals of Rites down pat by then and the normal difficulty shouldn’t provide much of a challenge. The hardest difficulty simply passes a lot more and reacts more quickly to your movements and attacks. You can do it!
Least-Played Exiles
This one might be pretty rough, but it boils down to this: Whoever your Top Three exiles are (and you know who they are, don’t lie), you have to Liberate them first, and then play the rest of the game with your least-played Exiles. For instance, my most-played Exiles were The Girl, Sir Gilman and Ti’Zo in that order, so, in that order, I would Liberate all three of them. The opposite must also be true: the first three Exiles you Liberated must never be Liberated in this playthrough. You have to keep them until the very end.
This will, of course, increase your difficulty immensely, as you’ll now have to primarily rely on the Exiles with whom you are least familiar, and you’ll have to do so when the game is at its most-challenging point. I almost never played Volfred, for example, but I may have to rely on him when it matters most.
Don’t worry, though: we have an extensive guide to every Exile in Pyre, which should help you know what Talismans to use and what Masteries to unlock even for those Exiles you never touched during your first playthrough.
Always Use Titan Stars
That said, I can certainly understand the desire to not want to limit yourself too much. This is new game plus, after all, not just custom difficulty, so you should have access to everything you had access to when you finished Pyre the first time. If that’s your flavor, then, look no further than Titan Stars.
In case you haven’t gotten that far, Titan Stars are stipulations you can apply to any one Rite that make the game more difficult for you and easier for your opponent, with bonus experience as a reward. There are a variety of achievements for prevailing in a Rite with these active, so you might want to try these anyway. The key is that you always have to use them.
As for the two I’d recommend always using, go with Endriga The Widow, and Archbeast Sung-Gries. The combination of these two will decrease your Pyre‘s health by 30 and increase your opponent’s Pyre‘s health by 30. This 60 point swing will be pretty rough, but this is New Game Plus, after all.
No Restarts
One of the five most important things to know about Pyre is that, while the story progresses whether or not you succeed or fail at a Rite, you can restart a Rite at any time if it doesn’t go your way. This puts you in a bit of a bind: do you live with the consequences of your poor play, or do you grit your teeth, hit pause and click the restart button? Decisions, decisions …
Well this is New Game Plus. Time to take that decision away from you. If you want a true, New Game Plus experience, deny yourself the ability to restart Rites. If you lose, just keep on going. Sure, this might make for a bit of a despondent playthrough if you’re not successful. As you may know, you can only Liberate a certain number of Exiles, and there is a limited amount of Liberation Rites, so you may doom an entire roster of people to an eternity in the downside by your poor play.
But hey … no pressure.
